Carnival

The streets filled as sunset approached, the air growing heavy with perfume, food smells, and the slightly rancid aroma of flowers fermenting in their garlands. Kusanagi-Jones saw khir other than Walter, some of them accompanied and some of them alone, all moving with a sense of purpose that reminded him of footage he’d seen of Earth predators. Moreover, all of them seemed to be treated with a casual respect that surprised him. People and vehicles granted the khir the right of way, to such a degree that Lesa made better time jogging through the crowd beside the animal than she would have on her own. Kusanagi-Jones was hard-pressed to keep up.

The game of follow-the-leader ended when Lesa and the khir turned off the main road down a curved, narrow, unpopulated street that Kusanagi-Jones couldn’t enter without becoming obvious. He hung back, waiting for Lesa to round the corner, and didn’t step into the mouth of the street until her silhouette slipped out of sight.

If he were her, he’d have paused then, on the chance that he might get a glimpse of anyone following. So he didn’t race after. Instead, he chose a sedate path along the inside curve of the street, maintaining the wall’s cover for as long as possible. He paused to listen at the most extreme point of the arc—one of the drawbacks of New Amazonian architecture was the lack of useful reflective surfaces at street level—and mused briefly that eyes on the back of his head were all very nice, but he really wished that one of the tricks his wardrobe could perform was generating a periscope. For the space of three heartbeats, he listened, but heard nothing, not even the patter of a woman’s boots and a khir’s paws.

And then voices, softly, but too low for him to make anything useful of, given the echoes off tight walls. With careful steps, he rounded the corner. Lesa was not in sight, but the street ended in a T-intersection, and a pedestrian was moving toward him on hurried steps, her eyes fixed on the street as if she needed to pay close attention to where she was putting her feet. She walked steadily, though—no trace of staggering.

It was reassuring to encounter other traffic. He nodded deferentially as she passed, even stepping aside to provide her a comfortable margin, but she paid him no notice. He continued on, allowing himself to hurry now, and paused before entering the intersection.

Another patch of ground where a couple of nice, big, street-level windows would come in very handy. Kusanagi-Jones frowned and stared at his feet. “House,” he murmured, “which way did Miss Pretoria go?”

He was not answered, not even by a flicker of color absorbed from the deepening sky overhead.

He licensed a hand mirror and used it to check both ends of the cross street, crouching so when he extended it, his arm lay parallel to and near the ground. There was movement to the east, but the mirror was too small to reveal more.

His fisheye, however, showed him that the pedestrian was safely out of sight. He released the mirror and touched his wrist, keying the wardrobe back into camouflage mode. Then he stepped forward.

Lesa Pretoria was there. Back against a wall, her hands spread wide but not raised, exactly, so much as hovering, and Walter beside her, balanced on his hind legs like a miniature kangaroo, with his forelegs drawn under his chest and the feathers on his long, heavy tail fanned wide. They were surrounded by five armed women, and a man Michelangelo knew from the reception the first night: Stefan, a light-complected fellow with unusually fair hair, more so even than Vincent’s.

The man had his back to the alley and his bulk hid part of the scene. Beyond him, what Kusanagi-Jones had taken to be two attackers was revealed as an attacker and a hostage with her arm twisted behind her back, her own confiscated weapon by her ear.

The hostage was Katya Pretoria. Which explained Lesa’s careful, motionless poise.

Vincent would have known the instant he saw the bystander hurrying away. He would have read it in her gait, the guilty downcast of her eyes, the haste.

Kusanagi-Jones wouldhave to walk in on a mugging blind.

Or maybe not a mugging. Having Katya as a hostage—miserable, trying with pride not to flinch away from the muzzle of her own weapon—would tend to indicate that something more complex was occurring. Lesa had made casual comment about people kidnapped by pirates, after all, and not in a sense that indicated she was, entirely, joking. And there was the incident with Vincent—

As Kusanagi-Jones moved, he obtained a more complete perspective. The stranger was holding the weapon cocked beside Katya’s head. Not actually in contact, but close enough to make the point in a professional manner.

Lesa’s weapon was still holstered, but the other women were all armed, and only one of them hadn’t drawn. Kusanagi-Jones didn’t take her for the ringleader, though. More likely a scout.